National Child Labor Movement

While child labor movements got the ball rolling, the continuance of the battle to abolish child labor would continue through national organizations. Shortly after the issue of child labor became public national organizations started to form. The first of such national organizations formed was the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), which was founded in 1904 by Edgar Gardner Murphy. When Murphy created the NCLC he was working closely with a Felix Adler, who was a member of the New York Child Labor Committee. The NCLC’s purpose, according to the organizations secretary Samuel Lindsay, was to, “…investigate the conditions under which children are engaged in gainful occupations in all parts of the country, and to help create a healthy public sentiment in favor of giving every child the best possible chance to make the most of its life.” The beginning of the NCLC shows that the focus was more on state legislature rather than federal, but it still took nationally public awareness to get that far. Hitting the ground running, the NCLC quickly garnered support from highly influential individuals of the time as “…the Committee’s leaders were widely respected, highly capable, and genuinely interested …show more content…
Southern mill owners made claims that groups from the North were backing the NCLC in order to destroy “the Southern way of life.” It was realized that child labor in the south was holding wages down for labor unions which led to more support of NCLC by those unions. Labor unions were under the impression that Southern mill owners were supporting child labor practices because “poorly educated child laborers tended to become poorly educated adults who often were docile employees unlikely to demand higher wages or get involved in union organizing.” This is what led unions to support the NCLC while leading to manufacturers, who were antiunion, to oppose the NCLC’s attempts at eliminating child